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You can always find something to do in Amish Country. September is full of Festivals. So here is just a listing. For details, please go to our event page at amishcountry.org/events.
If you’ve been here for one of these festivals, let us know what you enjoyed about it. I love the Mennonite Relief Sale. Although I can’t afford any of the auction items, I love the feel of having all those people in one place helping a great cause. I know many people love the Nappanee Apple Festival’s 7 foot pie. Whatever your looking for, I’m sure one of our September festivals has something to enhance your trip.
-Mindy, Amish Country Northern Indiana Contributor and Visitor Center Specialist
It’s not so surprising to see travel research ranking visiting small towns tops the list of desired vacation activities. Elkhart County is especially blessed with terrific cities and towns with vibrant main streets.
The ECCVB is showing them off in exciting new ways to motivate travelers and keep them interested by launching a series of video clips promoting our cities and towns on our new YouTube Channel.
Take a look. This is just the beginning!
Let us know what you think of these videos, leave your comment here.
First, thank you ALL for your kind comments left on our blog! We appreciate the feedback and we’re thrilled that so many of you have such great things to say about Amish Country Northern Indiana!
Congratulations Kathleen! We’ll get your $25 American Countryside Farmers Market Gift Card right out to you. Be sure to visit back soon, we have another fun giveaway planned!
-Jessica, Amish Country Northern Indiana Technology Marketing Manager
Beautifully crafted products are a tradition in Amish Country, and the best way to find hand-crafted artistry is by traveling the Heritage Trail. This self-guiding audio driving tour is designed to let you explore at your own pace, get behind-the-scenes glimpses of Amish life and direct you to all the major attractions so you don’t miss a thing.
And we’ve made it easy to find some of the area’s most talented artisans along the way. Just watch for businesses that post the Heritage Trail Artisans sign. From fine arts to fine crafts, these signs will lead you to delightful discoveries, one-of-a-kind works and give you the chance to meet friendly, talented artisans eager to share their unique stories.
Nothing says sweet like pure maple syrup and we pour it on – about 70 gallons over stacks of pancakes during the Wakarusa Maple Syrup Festival . Plus we go through 20 bales of pancake flour! Not to mention going “whole hog” with 2,100 lbs. of sausage. That’s what it takes to feed 3,500 hungry people at the Lions Club Pancake & Sausage Meal. I’ve been in charge of the Lions Club meal for the last 15 years.
It’s a family tradition. My parents were in charge of it for years too. And my kids are involved, even coming home from college to help. I’m totally committed, and I’m not even a Lions Club member! All those pancakes raise lots of dollars that go back into the community for scholarships, kids’ eye exams and so many other great programs. Come join us at the Wakarusa Maple Syrup Festival, April 17 & 18, and eat lots of pancakes!
What is your favorite thing to do at the Wakarusa Maple Syrup Festival? Leave a comment. - Annette Brown, Pancake Lady Extraordinaire
I’m starting to see people coming back to Amish Country. The pace is picking up in the Visitor Center and the Heritage Trail driving tour CD and map are popular. It’s fun to watch! I have a few things that I need to tell you about Amish Country before you come to help make your trip a little easier.
First is that you need to begin early and stop early. Amish Country is a farming community at heart, and we get up with the sun, and close down as the sun is starting to set. If you want to visit shops, or visit businesses, or go to a museum, plan your day for a 9am to 6pm. You can always start earlier, but just keep that 6pm close time in your mind. Restaurants do stay open later.
If you want to learn about the Amish, the best place to go is Menno-Hof in Shipshewana. They are dedicated to telling the Amish and Mennonite story.
Great food is abundant in Amish Country. Pack a cooler so you can keep all your food purchases fresh. Driving the Heritage Trail is the best way to take in Amish Country, and it takes 3 and a half hours if you follow the audio tour and don’t stop. It will take most of your day if you want to make stops…and well worth it! You should plan on making at least a few stops on your way. And don’t forget to bring your camera. There are lots of great photo opportunities in Amish Country.
So have fun when you’re out and about in Amish Country, and I hope you enjoy your stay.
Have you driven the Heritage Trail audio tour? Let us know. Leave your comment
It is going to be a beautiful week in Amish Country Northern Indiana! NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmostpheric Administration, pronounced Noah) says we’re supposed to have temps in the 70’s and it will be sunny until Thursday night. For those of you who come to Amish Country this week, go drive the Heritage Trail, it will be a great time to be out and about. Start early and enjoy a leisurely pace as you go. Everyone on the trail needs to stop at Bonneyville Mill and enjoy being outside for a long period of time. Stretch your legs, fill your lungs with fresh air, and then get on the trail again.
Stop at the Essenhaus for that handmade and homemade gift. This is one of my favorite places to shop for someone who already has a lot of stuff, and would like something with more thought put into the gift. Also you can head on over to Honeyville and take pictures of some beautiful farms and landscape. In Goshen, stop at the Old Bag Factory and find that perfect item for that hard to buy person on your Christmas list. I love coming here and looking a dreaming about all the things that I would love to buy. Then head on to Nappanee. By this time, you’re going to want a snack, so stop at the Dairy Queen. This restaurant was destroyed by the tornado, and was finally rebuilt earlier this year. They bring your food out to your table. How great is that! Then, as you just think that you can’t be that car any longer (because it going to be so nice), get out and about in Wakarusa. Enjoy the small town atmosphere. Eat at Cook’s Pizza, and find some take along candy at the Wakarusa Dime Store. When you head back to Elkhart, go walk the Riverwalk and exercise off all the food you ate. It will be a great day.
My husband and I awoke early Saturday and decided to go for a stroll. We leashed up our dog and headed out to Elkhart’s RiverWalk. It was a glorious morning. The bright blue sky was dotted with fluffy white clouds and the fragrance of early summer flowers wafted on the breeze.
We started our walk at Franklin St. and Waterfall Drive heading south toward the waterfall behind Inova, taking time to watch mother ducks with ducklings bobbing up and down in the water. We doubled back and stopped to admire the new NIBCO Water & Ice Park along the west bank of the Elkhart River.
As we picked up the pace our dog happily trotted along greeting other walkers on the path. Approaching Jackson St. we opted for the underpass and met a few fisherman who said they had little luck catching fish but seemed quite content to just be passing time outside on a beautiful day. Circling behind the YMCA our dog’s attention turned to the families of geese crossing the path in front of us. Although he posed little threat, they weren’t taking any chances and hurried by making warning honking sounds.
We crossed the wooden footbridge and looped around Island Park remarking on the rapid current of the St. Joseph River as it converged into the Elkhart River at the tip of the park. Watching these fast moving wide waters, one could imagine the Native American people who once populated this area swiftly gliding along in canoes. Legend has it that Elkhart got its name from this island shaped like an elk’s heart.
We exited the park via the Sycamore Street bridge and walked south on the western side of the river along the boardwalk. Our dog longingly sniffed the air as we passed behind McDonalds. No stopping now, we were eager for our morning cup of coffee and continued south to Lexington Street. Turning up Lexington we stopped at the Daily Grind. Sitting at a little cafe table outside the coffee shop, my husband and I enjoyed our steaming brew and our dog lapped up a cool drink of water. What a perfect start to a weekend!
My husband and I got married in November of 2007, so we’re the young, fun newlyweds We’re always ready for an adventure – whether it’s planned or not. My husband absolutely loves history, so when I suggested driving the Heritage Trail on a beautiful, sunny Saturday – he was all for it! Little did he know, I was determined to eat my way around Amish Country! We started bright and early (8:30am) in Downtown Goshen infront of the Goshen Chamber. Starting the Heritage Trail in any city using the track numbers on the back of the CD was very easy! We just parked our car in front of the Goshen Chamber, facing south, and went to Track 5 on the second CD.
Helpful hint: If you are not quite sure of how the Heritage Trail works, it’s best to either start in Elkhart at the Visitors Center or listen to the first two tracks of the first CD – these two tracks give you an introduction to how the trail works, what you’ll be doing and seeing and also familiarizes yourself with the different tones used throughout the CD.
Heading out of Goshen on SR 119 is very scenic, but I was looking most forward to getting to Amish Acres where they have a bakery, a meat & cheese shop, and a soda shop & fudgery. We got out of our car and you could instantly smell the bakery. The bakery bakes everything daily for both the Restaurant and the things for individual sale. They have the best hearth bread (we bought a loaf to take home) and you can also get jars of jam, noodles, cookies, pies, and more! We also popped over to the meat & cheese shop to get a huge dill pickle to go for our next little leg of the Heritage Trail.
Helpful hint: At this point, we wish we would have brought a cooler. If you think that you want to buy any of the great meat or cheese products anywhere in Amish Country (and there are a lot of places to buy such things), invest in a cooler! You can purchase a cheap cooler or an insulated bag at any local grocery store.
Our next stop was in Wakarusa at the Wakarusa Dime Store– home of the jumbo jelly bean. These things are huge! The best part is that you can taste every single flavor of jelly bean they have! My favorite flavor is plain cinnamon, but if you can’t make up your mind they have awesome little mixes with really interesting names like “Colors of a John Deere”, “Colors of International Harvester”, “Love Potion Mix” and “Panther Chow”.
After filling up on jumbo jelly bean samples at the Wakarusa Dime Store we headed north on SR 19 to American Countryside Farmers Market. The Farmers Market has limited hours (Thursday 8am – 4pm, Friday 8am – 7pm, Saturday 8am – 4pm) so Saturday mornings are always busy. We arrived around 10:30am, and ready for lunch! There is a great selection of food, whether it be fresh meat to take with you and grill later (if you have a cooler, I recommend the pulled pork from Mattern’s Countryside Meats), fresh produce or something from their food court. My husband decided to get a buffalo burger and fries from Buffalo Pete’s and I went with a softshell taco, rice and beans at Mi Casita. Yummy!
Both my husband and I agreed that our next “must-stop-at” place along the Heritage Trail was the Das Dutchman Essenhaus – mainly because of their great pie but also because they have beautiful grounds to be able to get out, walk around and stretch your legs (and let your stomach have a rest!). I had originally really wanted to get here for lunch to enjoy their family style traditional Amish dinner, but since American Countryside Farmers Market was just too appealing, we just stopped by the bakery. It was such a beautiful day outside (and really one of the first summer-like days all year), it was certainly no disappointment to stop for any reason! Inside the bakery there were tons of freshly baked breads, cookies, jams and jellies, and donuts in addition to bagged noodles, apple butter, Amish peanut butter, cookie cutters in every shape and size and more. Even though I should not have, I picked up a couple of cinnamon rolls for the drive (because obviously I hadn’t had enough food for one day!).
The Das Dutchman Essenhaus grounds are HUGE, with lots of open space, a little craft village, a hotel with a conference center and even a little covered bridge that you can see while taking a buggy ride or just taking a little stroll around the property. Not ready to get back into the car yet – and a little full from all the great food finds we had – my husband and I wandered over to the front of the Inn and Conference Center to look at their Quilt Garden. The Das Dutchman Essenhaus is just one of the 23 different quilt and garden sites along the Quilt Gardens Tour – and they really outdid themselves this year! Even my husband had to admit, the garden was very cool – and he’s much more of a history guy than a flower fan.
After leaving the Das Dutchman Essenhaus, it wasn’t long before our drive took us right past the Deutsch Kase Haus.
The building was a simple but nice place, with a store in the front and the cheese factory in the back. They actually have windows inside where you can see the big tanks of curds and wey being made into cheese, just like my husband and I have seen on Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel. (Sadly however, Mike Rowe was nowhere to be found!!). The coolest thing there was that not only do they have a million different kinds of cheese available, but you can sample each one. They have these little containers by each variety with toothpicks. Grab a toothpick, spear a cheese cube and sample away. My favorite was the habanera – very hot and VERY good! My husband has a little less boring set of taste buds and went with the bacon cheese. The really cool thing about the Deutsch Kase Hausis that they sell the things to go along with cheese – we also bought crackers, summer sausage! They even have knives (good ones, not plastic) that you can buy for a dollar!
Helpful hint: Get the knife, you’ll be too tempted in the car with the cheese to not dig in … and it’s not as appetizing when you have to rip it apart.
After leaving the Deutsch Kase Haus, we were headed to Shipshewana. There are a lot of great places in Shipshewana to eat, but unfortunately I too full to eat anymore (disappointing!). JoJo’s Pretzelsin the Davis Mercantileis a must-not-miss place! They have freshly made, handrolled pretzels with a wide variety of toppings.
Helpful hint: make sure leave room for a pretzel – I wish I did – and try the sour cream and onion topping! It looked delicious!
The next few miles of the Heritage Trail had absolutely amazing scenery – a must-not-miss on the Heritage Trail! We passed the sign for Yoder’s Popcorn – a personal favorite of my husband. We had already decided that we wanted to eat at the Olympia Candy Kitchen in downtown Goshen, and since we (well, mainly I) spent so much time other places, we were on a slightly strained time budget. We parked our car on Main Street in downtown Goshen, right infront of the Courthouse, and walked to the Olympia Candy Kitchen. The lunch rush had subsided it appeared, and we were able to get a table right away. This place definitely looks like something out of a movie, with a long lunch counter, old dark wood candy display cases and even a punched tin ceiling. They have the best hamburgers and french fries, but I really recommend the chili. I love chili – of all sorts – and this is definitely at the top of my list! When we were leaving, we raided the front counter and bought a huge assortment of chocolate goodies: a few turtles, lots of chocolate covered raisins, turtles and my all-time favorite chocolate marshmallows.
Helpful hint: You can also buy any of the candies for sale at the Olympia Candy Kitchen online at OlympiaCandyKitchen.com – this is great because you always think that you brought enough home to share with friends – your friends will think you have great control and didn’t eat it all – they’ll never need to know you did!
I’ll be writing more in the near future about all of the other great things we saw and did along the Heritage Trail Audio Driving Tour – the Amish scenery, unique finds, quirky places and of course the all-new Quilt Gardens Tour! Make sure to leave some comments on the blog when you try some of the places to eat along the Heritage Trail! Let me know what you liked, or where you think my taste buds are crazy! Hope to hear from you soon!
- Amanda Eckelbarger
Marketing Assistant, Elkhart County CVB
Young Couple Travels in Amish Country
Just pack the kids and go! That’s my motto! Okay not really, but I strive for that LOL. Actually I was very excited to pack up the family and drive the brand new Heritage Trail audio driving tour this year. My daughter just turned 5 and my son is almost 1 year. I knew, if nothing else, they would love the food stops and they did!
Armed with a handheld computer game for my daughter and lots of cheerios and wet wipes for my little guy, my husband and I started our journey on a Saturday morning.The first food stop we came to was Deutsch Kase Haus. I knew my husband would love this place since cheese is one of his favorite foods. We pulled up and it’s just the cutest little shop. They have a water fountain outside as you walk up the stairs. Once inside, it’s like a cheese wonderland…very exciting for the cheese lover! They have tons of things for sale, Amish noodles, cooking items, old fashioned candies (which my daughter went straight for), Amish Country souvenirs and of course tons of cheese for sale and best of all…lots and lots of cheese samples! We saw a window where you can see the cheese being made, but production wasn’t going that day. By the time we left we were searching for cooler space to put our yummy purchases.
Tip #1 – Bring an extra cooler for all the cheese you will buy!
Our next food stop came when we got to Shipshewana. I knew my daughter would love JoJo’s Pretzels just based on what I had heard about it, but I had never been there. It was lunch time, perfect! JoJo’s was busy but not too crowded. It’s a really neat place, casual with a window where you can watch them roll out their handrolled pretzels. You can also buy hot dogs, really good looking sandwich wraps and more! We all loved the pretzels! They really were the best soft pretzels I had ever tasted. So good, in fact, my daughter tried to eat mine after she finished hers!
Tip #2 – Take your kids to ride on the carousel and see the puppet show at the Davis Mercantile!
Next, we followed the Heritage Trail along to Yoder Popcorn in Shipshewana. We pulled up and there weren’t any cars there, which was good because it was almost naptime. If you have kids you understand what that means. We walked in and, oh my, the smell was wonderful. They had all sorts of corn poppers, oils, salts, tons of popcorn in all kinds of flavors including the carmel corn and even microwavable popcorn, of which we purchased both. And samples! Yes, more samples, cute little bags of freshly popped corn. Yum!
Tip #3 – If your kids love popcorn, make this a must-stop. This popcorn is delicious!
Finally, my daughter’s much anticipated finale came when we had dinner at Das Dutchman Essenhaus that night because her #1 wish for the trip was to have a piece of banana cream pie! My little guy fell asleep on the buggy ride we took right before dinner, perfect timing. My husband and I ordered fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy and a side salad. Let me tell you…that chicken was so good. It really reminded me of my Grandma’s fried chicken a lot. They have a great kid’s menu too. Madison ordered chicken fingers, mashed potatoes a fruit cup and of course her banana cream pie. Can you tell how much she enjoyed it?
There are so many other places we wanted to go…so many Amish bakeries, the Wakarusa Dimes Store, The American Countryside Farmers Market… But those will have to wait until next time! When you have small kids you just do a little bit at a time. There is another trip to Amish Country with my family in the near future and I’ll be back with more must-see stops for you and your family!
Do you have a favorite food place in Amish Country or a tip for vacationing in the area with your family? Post your comment here.
-Jessica Barnhart
Technology Marketing Manager, Elkhart County CVB
Family Travels in Amish Country
You can always find something to do in Amish Country. September is full of Festivals. So here is just a listing. For details, please go to our event page at amishcountry.org/events.
Beautifully crafted products are a tradition in Amish Country, and the best way to find hand-crafted artistry is by traveling the 
Nothing says sweet like pure maple syrup and we pour it on – about 70 gallons over stacks of pancakes during the Wakarusa Maple Syrup Festival . Plus we go through 20 bales of pancake flour! Not to mention going “whole hog” with 2,100 lbs. of sausage. That’s what it takes to feed 3,500 hungry people at the Lions Club Pancake & Sausage Meal. I’ve been in charge of the Lions Club meal for the last 15 years.
It is going to be a beautiful week in Amish Country Northern Indiana! NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmostpheric Administration, pronounced Noah) says we’re supposed to have temps in the 70’s and it will be sunny until Thursday night. For those of you who come to Amish Country this week, go drive the Heritage Trail, it will be a great time to be out and about. Start early and enjoy a leisurely pace as you go. Everyone on the trail needs to stop at 
We started our walk at Franklin St. and Waterfall Drive heading south toward the waterfall behind Inova, taking time to watch mother ducks with ducklings bobbing up and down in the water. We doubled back and stopped to admire the new NIBCO Water & Ice Park along the west bank of the Elkhart River.
We’re always ready for an adventure – whether it’s planned or not. My husband absolutely loves history, so when I suggested driving the Heritage Trail on a beautiful, sunny Saturday – he was all for it! Little did he know, I was determined to eat my way around Amish Country! We started bright and early (8:30am) in Downtown Goshen infront of the Goshen Chamber. Starting the Heritage Trail in any city using the track numbers on the back of the CD was very easy! We just parked our car in front of the Goshen Chamber, facing south, and went to Track 5 on the second CD. 
Our next food stop came when we got to 
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